Cooling Jacket using Peltier plates

This was my bachelors project completed between 2022-2023. The projects was built in a group of four students and was completed in two phases - project introduction and plan submission, Project Demo.

Objectives

To build a light weight solution for field workers to overcome extreme heat conditions.

Main components in play

1. Peltier plates
2. MPTT controller
3. Heat sinks
4. A Polymer jacket
5. IOT system consisting of a Bolt

Did it actually work?

Light weight?, not it wasn't. The truth is using Peltier plates also comes with it downsides - heat dissipation. The way how a Peltier plates works is that, one side of the plate gets hold (which is the side we want to absorb and circulate around the body) and the other side gets hot, and this heat needs to be dissipated to avoid the plate from getting destroyed. We tried using two different methods - Liquid cooling and Heat sinks. Using plain water as the coolant never really worked because we needed the find a way to cool the water back and circulate it to the hot side, hecne making the setup even more complex. Hence we stuck to using heat sinks, but they would make the jacket heavier of course.

For the final version of the jacket, in order to make it feel lighter, we tried moving the heavy part away from the body using a mechanical lever. In this way, the user would never feel the weight of the setup behind, but practically the design was a failure.

Did we achieve cooling? Yes and no. The fact is, our body is a constant heat generating machine. The jacket we used for the setup was a polymer jacket, and what we realized was that, the user was constantly sweating inside the jacket, making it a counteracting effect. Well, but we did manage to lower the body temperature by 4 degrees. :)